2011 National EMS Assessment Report Released

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The Federal Interagency Committee for Emergency Medical Services (FICEMS) has released the 2011 National EMS Assessment. Sponsored by FICEMS and funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the report provides the first ever comprehensive description of emergency medical services, EMS emergency preparedness and 911 systems at state and national levels using existing data sources.

The National EMS Assessment, which was completed over a 24-month period from September 2009 to August 2011, provides a detailed description of the nation's EMS systems, which comprise an estimated 19,971 local EMS agencies, their 81,295 vehicles, and 826,111 licensed and credentialed personnel.

The landmark document is a powerful resource and the first national assessment of emergency medical services that provides comprehensive data aggregated at both the state and national levels. These data will allow the officials responsible for improving EMS systems to benchmark current and future performance and identify areas of strength and weakness.

The report includes information about what data are being collected at the state, regional, and national levels, the comprehensiveness, quality and availability of that data and the limitations of the existing data. It also includes recommendations for a sustainable process to assess the nation's EMS system and the final report summarizes the current state of the nation's EMS system, including recommendations for future assessment efforts.

Because the report is both detailed and comprehensive, it allows states, territories and regions the ability to identify areas where systems may not be as comprehensive as desired, and provides system leaders the information needed to leverage more resources.

The data collection and analysis plan was created based on the 1996 EMS Agenda for the Future's 14 EMS Attributes, and additional attributes were included to better reflect issues related to emergency medical preparedness and regionalized systems of care. Four data sources – the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO) 2011 EMS Industry Snapshot, the National EMS Information System, the Emergency Medical Services for Children Program 2010-2011 Federal Reporting and the 2007 Indian Health Services Tribal EMS Pediatric Assessment – were selected for inclusion after a comprehensive review of available data sources.

Click here to download draft of document (550 pages).